David Hilbert

David Hilbert (January 23, 1862 – February 14, 1943) was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of geometry. He also formulated the theory of Hilbert spaces,one of the foundations of functional analysis.
Hilbert adopted and warmly defended Georg Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. A famous example of his leadership in mathematics is his 1900 presentation of a collection of problems that set the course for much of the mathematical research of the 20th century.
Hilbert and his students contributed significantly to establishing rigor and developed important tools used in modern mathematical physics. Hilbert is known as one of the founders of proof theory and mathematical logic, as well as for being among the first to distinguish between mathematics and metamathematics.
Some examples of things he has done:

• Hilbert's Basis Theorem: his famous finiteness theorem
• Hilbert Spaces (linked above)
• Hilbert's Axioms: a set of 20 (originally 21) assumptions as the foundation for a modern treatment of Euclidean geometry
• Hilbert's Problems: Hilbert put forth a most influential list of 23 unsolved problems at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Parisin 1900. This is generally reckoned the most successful and deeply considered compilation of open problems ever to be produced by an individual mathematician.
• Hilbert's Program:
  • He believed that in principle this could be done, by showing that:
    1. all of mathematics follows from a correctly chosen finite system of axioms; and
    2. that some such axiom system is provably consistent through some means such as the epsilon calculus.

Moral: He did a lot.

Here's the actual David Hilbert Wiki Page , where I got the above information.


Sweet hat, bro.